As used herein, the terms “user agent” and “UA” can refer to wireless devices such as mobile telephones, personal digital assistants, handheld or laptop computers, and similar devices that have telecommunications capabilities. Such a UA might consist of a wireless device and its associated Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) that includes a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) application, a Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM) application, or a Removable User Identity Module (R-UIM) application or might consist of the device itself without such a card. The term “UA” may also refer to devices that have similar wireless capabilities but that are not transportable, such as telephones, desktop computers, set-top boxes, or network nodes. When a UA is a network node, the network node could act on behalf of another function such as a wireless device and simulate or emulate the wireless device. For example, for some wireless devices, the IP (Internet Protocol) Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) client that would typically reside on the device actually resides in the network and relays SIP message information to the device using optimized protocols. In other words, some functions that were traditionally carried out by a wireless device can be distributed in the form of a remote UA, where the remote UA represents the wireless device in the network. The term “UA” can also refer to any hardware or software component that can terminate a SIP session.
In traditional wireless telecommunications systems, transmission equipment in a base station transmits signals throughout a geographical region known as a cell. As technology has evolved, more advanced network access equipment has been introduced that can provide services that were not possible previously. This advanced network access equipment might include, for example, an enhanced node B (eNB) rather than a base station or other systems and devices that are more highly evolved than the equivalent equipment in a traditional wireless telecommunications system. Such advanced or next generation equipment may be referred to herein as long-term evolution (LTE) equipment, and a packet-based network that uses such equipment can be referred to as an evolved packet system (EPS). As used herein, the term “access device” will refer to any component, such as a traditional base station or an LTE eNB, that can provide a UA with access to other components in a telecommunications system.
For packet data, the signal that carries data between a UA and an access device can have a specific set of frequency, time, and coding parameters and other characteristics that might be specified by the access device. A connection between a UA and an access device that has a specific set of such characteristics can be referred to as a resource. An access device typically establishes a different resource for each UA with which it is communicating at any particular time.